A developing form of computer memory has the potential to store information more quickly and more cheaply, while using less energy, than what's used today by the semiconductor industry, NYU Physics Professor ...

SanDisk Corporation today introduced the 200GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card, Premium Edition, the world's highest capacity microSD card for use in mobile devices. In just one year after introducing ...

Scientists at the University of York have helped to uncover the properties of defects in the atomic structure of magnetite, potentially opening the way for its use in producing more powerful electronic devices.

(Phys.org) —Faster, smaller, greener computers, capable of processing information up to 1,000 times faster than currently available models, could be made possible by replacing silicon with materials that ...

A recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides new insights on the physical mechanisms governing the interplay of spin and heat at the nanoscale, and addresses the ...

Have you ever wondered how the tiny components and devices inside your cell phone are made? The devices inside your phone and computer, such as integrated circuits, microprocessors and memory chips, are made ...

(Phys.org) —Today's commercial flash memories usually store data as electric charge in polysilicon layers. Because polysilicon is a single continuous material, defects in the material can interfere with ...

(Phys.org) —Researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Tokyo have created electronic devices that become soft when implanted inside the body and can deploy to grip 3-D objects, ...

RIKEN, the University of Tokyo, and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS; President: Sukekatsu Ushioda) succeeded for the first time in generating and visualizing electron spin vortex state ...

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and Russian Academy of Science have demonstrated a new type of holographic memory device that ...

Computer data storage

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components, devices, and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer data storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer, that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all modern computers, and coupled with a central processing unit (CPU, a processor), implements the basic computer model used since the 1940s.

In contemporary usage, memory usually refers to a form of semiconductor storage known as random access memory (RAM) and sometimes other forms of fast but temporary storage. Similarly, storage today more commonly refers to mass storage - optical discs, forms of magnetic storage like hard disks, and other types slower than RAM, but of a more permanent nature. Historically, memory and storage were respectively called primary storage and secondary storage.

The contemporary distinctions are helpful, because they are also fundamental to the architecture of computers in general. The distinctions also reflect an important and significant technical difference between memory and mass storage devices, which has been blurred by the historical usage of the term storage. Nevertheless, this article uses the traditional nomenclature.